The meetings planned for August 26th have been postponed until further notice. It has been a busy summer for many and it’s a time to recharge and enjoy the rest of summer.
For people wishing to bridge between conventional schooling and democratic education, the article Wellbeing in Schools: Details of a pathway to mental health provides much of what needs to be considered to make change a positive experience for everyone in a school community. Anyone who reads the article and thinks they have a strong chance of introducing more democratic practices in their school is welcome to contact Uniting for Children and Youth to discuss the possibilities.
The Future of RCE Making Change Stick
The goal of RCE Making Change Stick has been to help grow a movement that brings rights respecting education to the mainstream. It presents a problem in need of a solution that can be equated to taking an idea from dream to reality. From this perspective, My Life, My Education and the Rights-Centric Education Network – RCEN can be regarded as prototypes that have not taken off, but they have taken us a good step closer to something that can fly.
What Has Been Learn?
- Respect for human rights are essential to wellbeing. A person’s mental health is impacted when their rights are violated, but the focus on rights is being questioned. It is suggested that it be shifted to wellbeing in order to resonate better with the general public. There is consequently a call to create the next prototype with wellbeing the core, and there appears to be interest among some people to get it defined.
- A problem that would partially disappear with the right prototype is that of establishing greater buy-in from the community of people who are already advocating for rights-centric education. Despite there being over 160 founders of the Rights-Centric Education Network, and a considerably larger number who have signed its Declaration of Child Rights-Centric Education, they are largely not working together. “Group collaborative capacity”, a term John Jones of World Systems Solutions has introduced to the discussion, is lacking. His document titled Conscious Collaboration is informative about what is needed to build that capacity.
- The implementation of change is as important as the change itself. In Making Change Stick, James Mannion describes how slice teams can be used to include the perspectives of everyone impacted by change initiatives.